Chinese, Vietnamese wind towers get new tariffs

The Commerce Department set tariffs as high as 105.4 percent on utility-scale wind towers imported from China and Vietnam in the penultimate step to finalizing duties in the ongoing trade spat over green energy.

Towers from China will face anti-dumping tariffs between 44.99 percent and 70.63 percent, depending on the manufacturer, as well as countervailing duties between 21.86 percent and 34.81 percent.

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Towers from Vietnam, meanwhile, will see anti-dumping duties of 51.5 percent to 58.49 percent.

Those figures are adjusted somewhat from preliminary rates announced earlier this year. The biggest change was the minimum anti-dumping tariff in China, which more than doubled.

The tariffs still need approval from the independent U.S. International Trade Commission.

The complaint was brought in December 2011 by a coalition of four domestic wind tower manufacturers that contended unfair subsidies in China and Vietnam have given tower manufacturers there a leg up.

Since filing their complaint a year ago, two of the four U.S. manufacturers, DMI Industries and Katana Summit, have fallen on hard times and shut down or sold off manufacturing facilities.

“At a time when domestic wind tower producers should have been benefiting from the increase in demand, … the U.S. wind tower industry is on the brink of collapse,” the coalition said in a filing to the ITC.

The ITC held a hearing on the tariffs last week and will have final say on the matter.

Still, it is difficult to pin the shutdowns directly on competition from towers made in China and Vietnam. A bigger problem facing the entire wind industry is the looming expiration of the production tax credit, which has sharply slowed orders for new equipment.

Domestic manufacturers are still hoping the new duties will help them compete.

“Should the PTC expire, even modest volumes of additional imports will have devastating effects on the remaining domestic producers, threatening the future viability of U.S. wind tower production,” the coalition brief says.